Will Your Child End Up Crushed by Student Loan Debt?

An article in theWall Street Journal reports on the plight of heavily indebted ex-students whose lives have been disrupted by debt. They did not count the cost.

One woman went into debt for $74,000 to earn a degree in business management. Should could have earned that degree in two years by distance learning for about $11,000. But no one told her. She pays $900 a month. That is 60% of her meager paycheck.

Her fiancé, age 31, spends 40% of his paycheck on student loans. Each works 60 hours a week.

They did not count the cost. No one warned them. It’s tragic.

The total student loan money owed in 2011 was $1 trillion.It keeps rising.

Most students get little help from colleges in choosing loans or calculating payments. Most pre-loan counseling for government loans is done online, and many students pay only fleeting attention to documents from private lenders. Many borrowers “are very confused, and don’t have a good sense of what they’ve taken on,” says Deanne Loonin, an attorney for the National Consumer Law Center in Boston and head of its Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project.

Read the fine print. No one tells them.

The average debt load at graduation is $25,000. But some burdens are far worse.

This debt forces the victims — and they really are victims of bad advice from adults — from starting their families.

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12 thoughts on “Will Your Child End Up Crushed by Student Loan Debt?”

They did not count the cost. No one warned them. It’s tragic. Guess we ought to be grateful for the excellent basic math skills being taught in today's union0run school system! I actually remember having to do compound interest calculations in GRADE SCHOOL. Not any more. And, not everyone had their sights set on "college". The idea of a millwright, machinist, craftsman was still not tarnished.

My child already is burderned by student loans. She clears about !400 a month, and her loans are about 200/month. I closed off my master bedroom and made her an apartment to live in to cut her housing costs. That's the only reason that she is making it. That would be a solution for everyone, if the government and the banks hadn't conspired to cause this foreclosure crisis. Living in a country with a liberal government is like playing a real life game of "Resident Evil." The government has spawned so many economic monsters in an effort to enrich Congress, its relatives and in-laws, and its ethnic constitutients that at every turn there is another monster.

Read the fine print? This is really an absurd sentence. For example, if you want to go to medical school you need close to $200,000. If you don't have the money, you need to borrow it from someplace, and at that point you cannot be choosy, you are happy to get a loan. It's good to be smart and shop around but not all of us have the luxury to pick and choose the best deals.

In 1974 I Graduated from Hight School, I had pretty good grades, but It was suggested that I should go to Community College. I did for a year, I then when to a University. It took me just six weeks to figure out that, this was not the right thing for me. I just didn’t want to be around, binge drinking, drugs and pretty much communists. So I Left School. I took a flying lesson, and decided that flying for for me. How to pay for it, well I went Commercial Fishing, Lobsters,Crab and tuna. I spent two very cold wet winters shooting coyotes for pelts. Prices for those were very good for them for some reason. I went to flight school. I live a debt free life or as debt a free life as you can live. No credit cards. The problem with most is that they want it now, not next week or until you put enough money away to pay for it or a good chunk of it. Look they taken the money, gotten degrees in basket weaving and are now complaining that gee I was lied to and write off the loans. Well you go to College today pretty much by the time you are done, two things will happen, one you will be up to your eyeballs in debt, and two, you will be more or less a communist.

And what is the Tea Party doing about it? Nothing. They are a waste of my and your time. Long live the people of America. Not Twea Partiers, or GOP Republicans and even Democrats. We the people will change things.

Just another scheme by the communists to make people indebted to Big Government and possible recruits for the Muslim-Marxist's "civilian army." The sorry "Re-PUNK-licans" are handed a campaign issue and they are not wise enough to capitalize from it. The left – communists – are in control of higher education and should be held accountable for the high cost of education but they aren't because of the lame and cowardly conservatives – amasing!

If you don't know enough to READ, you shouldn't be going to college! I knew the costs and tried to keep them DOWN and worked through my degree. Those who can't read and have been brought up with their parents paying for everything, think they should be GIVEN a degree and not have to work for it. Life is hard and it requires work. Understand that and education becomes CHEAP and useful!

The woman wanted a degree in business management and couldnt be bothered to read, or was incapable of understanding the financial implications of the loan she was taking on. I dont think she is suited to business management somehow.

Online Degrees are cheaper???? Somebody had better go do their homework. In many, too many cases, distance learning from an accredited college/university is just as if not more expensive. And to boot most of the degrees are so general or in education (if you are already a teacher) that they truly are not cost effective. Only a hand full offer online degrees in Chemistry, Math, Physics. Then they are at the undergraduate level.

In short resident and distance learning are now just revenue enhances for colleges. Just check out what disciplines most are in.

As far as student loans why is it that colleges increase their tuition to match or exceed the yearly amount you can borrow under the FAFSA program?? Is there an Educational/Government Complex now as the oft mentioned Military/Industrial Complex?

There are very few universities that are offering online courses on affordable prices like http://bit.ly/1h6Y6ID the remaining are just the other side of the regular courses charging moreover the similar amount. As far the loan part is concerned, I believe the improvement in FAFSA will help students in applying and paying off their loans.